InspiredRobotics.com

Electric Cars – Is The Reality Getting Closer?

Phil — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:20:17 +0000

There has been a lot of talk over the last few years about the impact that electric vehicles are going to have on our lives and how different the future is going to be, but we have yet to see any real and significant change.

That may well be about to change!

Racing Green Endurance is a team from London Imperial College who are about to break records that may give electric vehicles a well needed boot in the backside.

With the development of the next generation of electric car this team have produced record breaking capabilities in a small and precise package and they’re not afraid to show it off.

The team of 11 students have completed the production of a test car based on the shell of a Radical SR8 and have achieved some really great things. They have produced a car that is fast and efficient. Ultra cheap to run and, possibly most importantly, can cover a decent distance between recharging.

The distance thing has always been an issue for electric vehicles and rightly so. The need for long recharging cycles and the fear of running out of power many miles from a mains socket has really held back the sales and social acceptance of these potentially wonderful creations, but that doesn’t have to be the case.

As quickly as technology progresses, there is always some gusty and willing volunteers willing to push and pull at it limits. That’s exactly what this team of London Imperial College students have managed to do with their electric supercar.

Twice round the M25 sounds like some B-rated horror film to 99% percent of the people that have ever had to drive on it, but for this team it was a testing ground. Not only a testing ground in fact, but a proving ground.

On one single charge this car was able to complete a 250 mile trip in and out of London via the M25. Twice!

Now, this is an impressive feat as I know I’ve had petrol cars in the past that couldn’t even complete that distance, but Racing Green Endurance does it whilst also packing the equivalent of 400hp!

So What’s Next?

Well I’m glad you asked!
Not happy with the M25 any longer, they are going to attack the longest road in the world. The Pan American Highway. All 26,000km of it. Although I’m assuming it won’t be in a single charge(that’s a few years off yet!).

The team are flying off to Anchorage, Alaska on the 28th June where they will begin their journey to the worlds southernmost city of Ushuaia.

All this to prove to the world that electric vehicles are a force to be reckoned with.
Brilliant!

I wish you all luck.

You can find out more about the car, the team and their progress right here at www.racinggreenendurance.com

Artificial Intelligence : Why Should You Care?

Phil — Tue, 18 May 2010 19:14:18 +0000

So you’ve heard of Artificial Intelligence right?
This couple of words have been bandied around for years now but what exactly is it all about?
Is it the humanoid robot whose sole purpose is to serve human kind?
Is it the humanoid robot whose sole purpose is to destroy human kind?
Or is it just a load of geeks sitting around a computer screen, getting all excited about 1′s and 0′s?
Well, I sometimes wander about this myself and have decided to find out if and how Artificial Intelligence has or will have a place in our lives.

What Is Artificial Intelligence

So let’s start with the basics. What exactly is meant by artificial intelligence?

According to the Oxford Dictionary
the performance by computer systems of tasks normally requiring human intelligence.

Mmmmm…..right…..it sounds much more exciting in the films!!!

Well, then I guess the next step would be to find out what the words mean individually.

Artificial. That’s an easy one right

1 made as a copy of something natural.

2 contrived or affected.

And this intelligence thing?

1 the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

2 a person with this ability.

3 the gathering of information of military or political value.

4 information gathered in this way.

So, if we put them together we could get a definition something like

a copy of something natural that has the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

Right now we’re getting somewhere.

But it’s just not that simple

And here’s why!

A copy of something natural could mean anything. It could mean a cardboard cut out of a tree.

You have cut the cardboard out and made a copy of the tree. Done.

And the other half of our ‘new definition’ just makes the subject even more hazy.

Acquiring and applying knowledge and skills. Well, you could argue that a speed camera has the skill to gather the knowledge of the passing cars and uses it by giving it to(the often money hungry)local authority.

So if we put them together we have a cardboard tree that can take pictures of cars so they get fined!

Would you class this copy of a tree as being intelligent?

I wouldn’t. Although I’d have to give the local authority that did it a round of applause(unless it was me getting fined!!).

It’s difficult huh?

It’s really not that easy to peer into the world of artificial intelligence and not shake your head a little bit whilst mumbling “Yeah….but….that’s…..ummm….!!!”, but it is possible. It just needs to be broken down into smaller chunks and digested piece by piece like a nice succulent roast pork dinner with mash and yorkies and…..mmmmmmm………!!!!

Sorry…..got lost for a second there.

So over the next few posts/weeks/months/years I’m going to look at this fascinating area of development(and it is fascinating I promise you) and try to make it a bit more digestible.

We’ll look at how it can be decided whether a machine is intelligent. Whether this intelligence exists already or not. Why we would want it to exist and how it will affect our lives.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this(not hugely informative) post and will check back soon for the continuation.

If you haven’t already then be sure to sign up to the Inspired Robotics RSS feed or sign up to the weekly digest newsletter.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Phil.

Data: How private is your life?

Phil — Sun, 16 May 2010 00:42:45 +0000

As we get more and more accustomed to the growing numbers of databases and systems that hold information about us, information about our families, our jobs, our illnesses and our misdemeanour’s. As we input more and more of our personal data into business records, government databases and social networking sites, should we be asking the question of how this information can be used against us?

A Birds Eye View

If you were to walk out of your house right now, walk around the area that you live in for ten or fifteen minutes and observe the world around you, the chances are that you will be able to spot at least one camera. The chances are even higher that the number of cameras that you see is much more than just the one and the thing that is all to easy to forget is that these cameras are recording us.
We very easily grow blind to the fact that these ‘security’ cameras have snippets of our lives from every time that you walk past them.

Many people won’t worry about this. Many people have no need to worry about this. They have nothing to hide and therefore don’t give these cameras a second thought, but whether you have something to hide or not these cameras are just the tip of an iceberg of information that is collected about a vast majority of the population every single day.

So How Much Do They Know About You?

Well let’s start with what you are doing right now. Chances are you’re sitting on you computer at home reading this. Where were you before this? What other sites had you visited and what site will you visit after?

If were to call up your internet service provider right now and ask them to send you all the details that were held on their database about you, I think you’d be surprised at how much detail they have about your surfing antics. The minimum you’d expect to see from your isp would be 12months of records.

Then ask yourself how many times you’ve bought things online or signed up to newsletters. How many times have given your address or telephone number? How many times have you given someone else’s, maybe to have a present delivered to them? It begins to add up.
Now there’s a database trail of not only what you do online, but links to the physical world around you and don’t forget that these lists are freely sold to the highest bidder in many cases.

And Social Life?

Then there’s social networking sites.

The complete transformation in the way that we communicate with each other over the last few years has changed the way that many of us see the data that we are willing give to complete strangers.
We broadcast into an open internet things that we wouldn’t tell our next door neighbour and openly invite strangers to look through our thoughts, our pictures, to meet our friends and family, to learn our habits and preferences, but maybe we need to stand back and think about these actions once in a while.

So what does this mean for you you?

Well, for the majority of people, the information that is bouncing around the networks of the world, around government buildings and business servers will never cause any problems, but for others this could be a different story.
If the criminal records of the entire population of Britain were to be held on databases(which I’m sure nearly 100 percent are) then that would give over 60 million records. That’s a lot of information to reliably store and if you cast your mind back to any of the news reports about government records being lost(on a train, in a pub, etc, etc) or database systems being corrupted or unreliable, then things start to get a little bit scarier.

Let’s assume that 1 or 2 percent of criminal records become corrupted and the information held in them is not wholly true, which happens a lot (due to systems matching up dates of birth with names and coming up with the wrong person, for example). This would suggest that over one million people in Britain alone could, at some time in their lives and probably when they least expect it, be wrongly identified as a criminal. Hopefully the crime they get mistakenly identified as committing will be small, but there are cases of people being arrested for very serious crimes of which they had nothing to do with. These records though are notoriously difficult to rectify.

Anyway, I know I’m waffling a bit but I had just watched this documentary from channel four that got me thinking, so I thought I’d come share those thoughts with you(and I’m sure they’ll go into one of my databases somewhere in the unknown!).
The documentary was called Erasing David and the link’s at the bottom of the page.
I would really recommend watching it.

Phil.

Erasing David – Channel 4. Watch it.

Robo Astronaut – Humanoid And Beyond

Phil — Fri, 14 May 2010 23:59:51 +0000

Not so long ago, in conversation, I said that I wouldn’t particularly want to work on space projects and my reasoning behind it was well founded.
“The reason” I said was “because I like to work on projects that I can see an end to. Projects that finish and are relevant to our lives now. Space is just too big!!”
But then we’re all allowed to change our minds aren’t we?? And I changed mine when I saw this amazing humanoid robot that NASA and GM are developing to send to the international space station.

Robonaut, or R2 as he’s known, is being developed, along with other technologies, to assist astronauts on their mission into the worlds that surround our planet. R2 will assist with maintenance and the monotonous chores that are a part of life whilst inside the space station, but that’s not what’s so impressive about this robot.

Robots until now have mostly interacted with humans in a very systematic ‘master-slave’ fashion. The human would interact with a robot with a relatively small amount of pre-formed instructions and the robot would react in a relatively linear and systematic way. NASA are changing this.

Well, as you can see from the video the dexterity of R2 is brilliant. Designed to mimic the degrees of freedom that we humans have, therefore putting him in a position to do jobs that the astronauts would usually be required to perform. This is great news for work that is dangerous or very repetitve and due to the very clever and well thought out design of R2 he is also able to perfom most of these tasks without the need for alteration to the tools that are being used. He just uses the same tools that were originally designed to be used by the astronauts.
But that’s not all…

In order to get R2 to work as efficiently as possible, NASA and GM have realised that the way R2 acts and interacts is very important.

We as humans work very well on a partner to partner basis. We communicate and talk. We ask questions and find out how we can best assist to get the task finished in the quickest time. R2 does this also.

“Our goal is not for robots to have the same thought process as humans, but rather for them to act, respond and interact more ‘naturally’ in ways that humans do with other humans” said Illah Nourbakhsh, a scientist who leads a group developing human-robot teams at NASA Ames Research Center. This is being achieved through three main areas, one of which is what they call ‘collaborative control’.
Nourbaksh explained “A key benefit of collaborative control is that the robot is able to ask questions of the human in order to compensate for (the robot’s) limitations.”

So, the robot asks questions if he’s not sure about something! Now we’re getting somewhere. Now it seems that the age of robotics may really be coming upon us.
This abiltiy for the robot to question the situation works alongside other things that make R2 unique, such as reasoning techniques.

These are things that we as humans use all the time in communication and are essential for us to understand and converse in a valid manner.
Nourbakhsh said. “We believe that by building robots with reasoning mechanisms and representations that are similar to what humans use, we can make human-robot interaction more natural and human-like.”

NASA are researching how teams of humans and humans/robots work together to try and make R2 fit into a working human team as easily and as naturally as possible. He will work alongside humans in tasks ranging from pipe assembly to research. Who know what else!

The work going in to R2 is not the only research concentrating on trying to get a smoother and less obtrusive integration of robots into lives, but it is by far the most exciting that I have seen.

R2 will work in teams with humans, as a partner not a slave.

R2 will live in close proximity with humans and interact with them in ways that have never been done before.

And like all new ‘products’, this technology will eventually leak down from being only available for space missions, to being cheaper enough for all of us to be able to afford.

Then we’ll all be able to have our own R2!

Tequila Slammer Robot

Phil — Wed, 12 May 2010 23:59:10 +0000

Ok so this one is for you out there who don’t particularly care about having your own towel folding robot but would prefer something a little more……ummmm….fun?

Well, bring on Tequila Slammer Bot!!!!!

I just found this video of this robot, Roberta, who I believe was employed to serve drinks to guests in the back stage area of the Roskilde Festival in 1995. That’s 15 years ago, yet the video looks like it straight out of the 80′s.
Now Roberta isn’t quite as sophisticated as our towel folding robot but I bet you she’s a lot more popular for those first time, 20-somethings who are trying to get on the ‘service bot ladder’.

Mind those hangovers now!!

Towel Folding Robot

Phil — Wed, 12 May 2010 20:20:22 +0000

As we slowly begin to accept the fact that robots are going to play a bigger part in our lives and will eventually be integrated into almost every aspect of our daily routines, we start to wonder about what we would like them to do for us.

As we sit watching those sci-fi films about how, in the future, we will all have robots in our homes taking care of those chores that we despise, it makes you think about which of those chores would be the first to go.

Well? What would be yours?

If you answered “towel folding” to the above question then your time might just be getting nearer.

Below is a video of a robot that has been developed by University of California, Berkely and although, to those of you who are used to the sci-fi films, he/she may not look that impressive, but this robot shows some impressive skills.

Ok, ok. So it’s not quick and in no way could anyone say that it has been designed perfectly to go around the house doing all those little things that everyone hates so much, but it does fold towels!

The robot has been introduced to these different sized, different coloured towels for the first time and the amount of code that is required just to identify where the corners of the clothes are is magnificent. That is a lot of hard work, but it does go on to do a great job.
This is a great step forward in the recognition of items that we, as humans, have learnt to use without even a second thought. We though have had many, many years to evolve these capabilities, but what you will see as a result of research such as this will be will be visible not in generations, but within all our lifetimes.

Think about that the next time you’re folding your towels!!

Solar Planes : Could It Be The Future Of Flying?

Phil — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:29:41 +0000

As the world becomes increasingly worried about the state of pollution and the effects that it is having on our planet, you can not help but to become intrigued in how technological developments may influence the direction of things over the next few years.
It is no secret that flying in modern planes puts a significant burden on our increasingly fragile eco-system and attempts have been in place for a long time to find alternatives to the power hungry, carbon spewing monsters that dominate our skies. So it gave me a little smile when I saw this video of the Solar Impulse NB-SIA taking to the skies.

Now, I know that it doesn’t seem like this is a very practical piece of machinery and it’s not looking likely that this will replace the 747′s and all the large passenger planes just yet, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

The designers behind this plane have some great goals in sight, with the major one being a 36 hour flight, that’s day and night, without the use of any fuel. I can’t help but get excited as the images of a fueless avionics future flash through my mind.

The planes consists of 11,628 solar panels with the charge stored in lithium polymer batteries. Now these two components seem to be the most constraining parts of the plane. The solar cells are only 22% efficient, which they chose because of their weight, but with the increasing speed at which solar cells are being developed, it won’t be long before something more suitable becomes widely available. Energy storage is also pointing towards a really exciting exciting future. There are so many technologies being tested and released right now that who knows what storage-to-weight ratios will will be like in the not too distant future. Currently, the accumulators in the Solar Impulse HB-SIA takes up a quarter of the weight of the entire plane. When that weight can come down, then other parts of the plane can be scaled accordingly.

One part of the plane that may be able to be scaled down with future developments are the wings, which on this model have a span of 63.4m. This is just under the wingspan of a 747, yet the overall weight of the Solar Impulse is only 1,600kg about the weight of a car and this is all pulled along by 4x10HP electric motors. Crazy.

The engineering milestones that have been accomplished with developing the technology of the Solar Impulse HB-SIA give a real glimpse into the future.

The thought of being able, within my lifetime, to fly in an all-electric, non-polluting passenger plane to my favourite destination, gets me jumping up and down with excitement.

Trends are changing. Technology is changing. These two factors add up to what is going to be an amazingly exciting period, not only within the aviation industry, but in every industry on this planet.

To learn more visit the Solar Impulse team here.

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Should We Be Using Electronic Balloting

Phil — Sat, 08 May 2010 17:25:39 +0000

When I woke up on Thursday morning, I got dressed, had some breakfast and went to the local community centre to cast my vote in this years general election.
Walking into the the hall I was greeted by a selection of people sitting at their table, ready to take my details and check me off their list. They gave me my two pieces of paper and pointed me over to the plywood stall that had been erected especially for this event. I made my choice, placed my paper into a box, smiled, thanked the very relaxed people and left.
As my day went on, I didn’t give my voting experience too much thought. It was easy and quick and very convenient. Just the way the voting system should be, but I can’t help thinking that maybe I was just lucky.

When I turned on the television the next day, I quickly saw that not everyone had been so lucky with their day of voting. The news talked about stations closing at 10pm, as they are obliged to by law, but with many people outside that hadn’t been able to vote. Not because they didn’t want to and not because they had left it until the last minute either. Some of these people had been outside their local voting centre for hours. Standing, waiting and then being turned away.

Worse still, was the news that certain voting centres had been closed early. Not because everybody had cast their vote and there was no reason left for them to stay open, but because the people in charge of making sure that everything was properly organised on this very important day had failed to get enough voting slips. Instead of trying to get more they closed their stations, therefore denying many more people their say in how Britain is governed.

Well, this got me wondering how and why this had happened. It got me wondering why we are still relying on a system that asks the local council to make very important decisions in an event which should be run with the same standard throughout the country.
Why have we not came into the electronic age when it comes to our voting system?
Why are we still relying on teams of hundreds of people to count through voting slips in a rush to get the results out by the early hours of the morning?
Why are we still including this massive chance of human error?

Ok, so I know a lot of people will be saying something like “Yeah, but there’s been plenty of times when the large scale electronic systems have failed!” and that’s true, but with a little bit of thought and planning it really shouldn’t be that difficult to get a safe and reliable system in place.
For example, if voting was to take place electronically then results would be able to be tallied quickly and reliably, available almost instantly at the closing of the polls. If these electronic booths were to then print a ‘receipt’ of these polls at the source then they can also be cross checked in the event of the necessity of a re-count.

If the computer fails altogether though, then pull out the paper sheets. The manual counting of the ballot papers should be a backup to a quicker and more reliable system of electoral counting, not the primary way of doing it.
I really hope that, come the next elections, everyone will be able to cast their vote as they deserve to do. It seems to me that this can only really happen with a re-think of the system that we use during these periods.

Is electronic balloting the way to achieve this? Maybe. There are hurdles to get over when changing any system but it can be done. The most important thing is to have a system that works. Paper form or electronic form, it doesn’t even matter but it does have to be reliable, quick and easy to integrate.
But most it importantly it has to be fair!

Acoustic cyborg control?

Phil — Thu, 06 May 2010 22:57:50 +0000

So, it seems that Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon are doing a little bit of research into new ways of controlling devices. The video below shows something they are working on right now, which is a system that takes inputs from vibrations within the body, such as tapping the arm in certain places.

It works by ‘learning’ the different natural frequencies that different parts of the body have when tapped and then runs this through their software to control whatever it is linked up to.

They call it Skinput.

So, this gets me wandering about what’s next.

For instance, could something like this be incorporated into our computers so that we could do away with our keyboards. Imagine just typing away by tapping your fingers together. Combining your taps, for instance, so that left hand middle finger, plus the right hand little finger middle knuckle, would equal ‘G’?? Or having you personal media viewers on, your laptop in your bag and still being able to check your email while walking down the street or sat on the train, everything connected wirelessly.

I like this…!!!

Go learn more about it here

Phil.

Robotic Phones – Could they be our new best friend?

Phil — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:57:48 +0000

So, earlier on I saw this video and it got me wondering about the future of our gadgets such as our mobile phones.

This funky little fella was developed at the Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) and apart from being a little annoying it is quite inspiring.
At the moment, from what I know about it, Cally (as he’s known) mainly reacts to incoming calls and text messages by jumping around in some pre-programmed way. It responds to certain emoticons such as sad and happy faces by posing or dancing around in its respective way.
This can be seen here.

So, apart from the video being a little tedious it did get me thinking about the craze a few years back when the tamagotchi was released. It seemed like everyone(at least under the age of 15) had one and these kids would look after them until either the batteries died or their little friend did.

Well, I have been curious lately of which direction mobile phones would end up going in. They are obviously becoming more powerful computing machines, but what if they were to develop limbs and the ability to walk about. What if, when my phone was to ring and I was upstairs, I would no longer have to sprint down to get it before the caller hung up. What if instead, my phone would sprint to me.

If when I lost my phone in the back of a taxi, which is not unknown(that’s where almost all of my phones have ended up) I could just call my little friend up or text it my secret message and it would, using it’s built in GPS, trundle home at it’s own pace.

Imagine leaving your house to go to work in the morning. Opening the front door and having your mobile phone waiting patiently to greet you, like a hungry kitten.
I’m not sure that this is how phones develop and I’m not really sure that I even want them to develop into this, but as the phone market becomes more and more about gadgets and accessries, who knows.

Give me your thoughts.

Phil.

InspiredRobotics.com

Electric Cars – Is The Reality Getting Closer?

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Artificial Intelligence : Why Should You Care?

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Robo Astronaut – Humanoid And Beyond

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